Weeks 10 & 11

160509 – 160522 — Total classroom hours 23.5

Still a little behind on the posts… Week 10 was pretty standard, no excuse for not getting a post up. I thought that I would have finished the foundations section by the end of week 10, but I saw pretty early on into the weekend (when I get 70% of my work done) that I was going to have a checkpoint or two left. I got hung up on something, which at this point I cant remember what it was, and I figured that it would be most efficient to hold off until my mentor meeting on Monday to resolve it. Once I got that dealt with I only had two more serious checkpoints left, both dealing with API’s, so I just accepted I’d have a light week this week. I’m still ahead of pace (that status bar is a blessing and a curse, haha!) and had some non-school code things I wanted to work on.

It turns out that the very last checkpoint in the foundation block is basically something that should be done with my mentor. Luckily my mentor and I spoke about which project would be best to start with during my last meeting, so I started digging into that. He suggested I work on Bloccitoff, which is a self-destructing to-do app. My gut reaction to the thought of doing another to-do app was not great, but I trust his judgement, and I know I can make this one better than others that I have already done.

Although I was able to setup the base structure of the app on my own, it appears that Bloc wants our mentor meetings from now on to consist mostly of pair programming via screenshare. I don’t want to get too deep into this first project before I discuss it with my mentor first. I have been reading some things about pair programming and am intrigued at the concept. I’ve also talked to some people about it, with mixed but passionate, opinions. The 30 minute meetings go by so fast as it is, I’m curious as to how much we will really be able to accomplish pair programming, but I’m game to try.

Along with setting up the base structure of my app I also started incorporating Waffle.io, an open source project management software. It’s probably not necessary to utilize a project management software when working primarily by myself, but the more familiar I am with it when I start the job hunt the better off I will be. Waffle takes a second to get used to, but with minimal setup, understanding how it incorporates with Github, and how formatting git branches can streamline the process, its pretty slick.

Oh! Hey! I’m done with foundations! Thats probably supposed to be a pretty big deal, technically it probably deserves a blog post all of its own. But I’m not big on celebrating, and I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me. I will say this, I have been very happy with the program so far. It hasnt been perfect, but any time I felt something was not quite as great as it could be, I always reached out to Bloc in one way or another and they welcomed the feedback. The coursework seems to have the right amount of depth, I can converse among my peers when Im at meetups other events. They still make you dig for certain things, which I appreciate and definitely feel has made me a better programmer. So, yeah, pretty happy so far. Oh, and I signed up for a hackathon APIs and IPAs for June. I was a little hesitant considering my small knowledge base, but the event organizer I was speaking with seemed pretty confident that I would benefit a lot from it, so I figured why not?